on alphas

'you need leaders, yeah? otherwise it's just community community community, pfaffy pfaf pfaf.'
- lolli

old (f)arts

'I'm not a tape recorder for other people's stories. the trick is to strip it back and make what they're saying sound like talking. that's the art of it.'
– Helen Garner on writing

psyched for the fete

'i did snow cones last year, but i didn't really know anyone. this year i'm with the drunk dutch pancake girls, should be fun. someone else can squirt the batter and do the icing sugar though, i'll handle the money.'

thinking big and that

after the baptism

'there might be some surprises waiting for you on the other side,' the priest tells my grandfather and excuses himself, leaving pa and his zimmer frame directly under a suspended sculpture of jesus, bleeding in bronze all over himself from that crown of thorns.

mum walks past. is trapped. pa starts shaking his finger at her almost immediately. His eyes narrow, leaning in close. accusing her of something.

nearby nan notices aloud that the priest seemed to escape a serve. but now it's my mum who's copping it and something snaps: she's got enough going on today, least of all this violent church. and we've suffered this mean old man for too long.

he might be 80, but he won't win an argument with me. i'm chunder the third and i've done more work on myself.